In this toilet Marie Antoinette appeared before the revolutionary
tribunal, from the 6th to the 13th of October. Nothing royal was
left about her but her look and her proud bearing.
The people, pressing in dense masses into the spectators' seats, did
not weary of seeing the queen in her humiliation and in her
mourning-robe, and constantly demanded that Marie Antoinette should
rise from the woven rush chair on which she was sitting, that she
should allow herself to be stared at by this throng, brought there
not out of compassion, but curiosity.
Once, as she rose in reply to the demand of the public, she was
heard to whisper, as to herself: "Ah, will this people not soon be
satisfied with my sufferings?" [Footnote: Marie Antoinette's own
words.--See Goncourt, "Histoire de Marie Antoinette," p. 404.] At
another time, her pale, dry lips murmured, "I am thirsty!" but no
one around her dared to have compassion on this cry of distress;
every one looked perplexed at the others, and no one dared give her
a glass of water. At last one of the gens d'armes ventured to do it,
and Marie Antoinette thanked him with a look that brought tears into
his eyes, and that perhaps caused him to fall on the morrow under
the guillotine as a traitor.
The gens d'armes who guarded the queen, they alone had the courage
to show her compassion.
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